Three years since the Bash 5.2 release and one year since the first alpha release, GNU Bash 5.3 was released overnight as the newest step forward for this popular shell used on Linux and other operating systems.

GNU Bash 5.3 introduces a new form of command substitution that executes the command within the current shell execution context. This allows for reading the command substitution's output or to find the result via the "REPLY" shell variable when the command substitution is complete.

Bash 5.3 also has been updated for C23 programming language conformance, Readline has added a new option for case-insensitive searching, the GLOBSORT variable can be used to determine how the shell will sort results of pathname completion, and many other changes. The C23 conformance means that Bash can no longer compile with K&R style C compilers.

There are also many bug fixes to find with Bash 5.3. More details on the 5.3 changes can be found via the [1]-rc2 announcement .

Those wanting to download Bash 5.3 from source can do so via [2]GNU.org .



[1] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bash/2025-06/msg00004.html

[2] https://cgit.git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/bash.git/tag/?h=bash-5.3